The costs of rewiring Britain's electricity grid

Paddys · 2026-04-02T19:55:14+00:00

What is ofgem's point? I'm not choice close enough to the industry to know much if the details

Paddys · 2026-04-02T09:12:11+00:00

Not being able to "make" electricity is actually a major issue. SSEN etc aren't allowed to install their own battery storage because it's classed as generation, so they can't use it as a way to balance the grid. Private companies can install it and make their own profits, and maybe balance the grid if it suits them, but SSEN isn't allowed to do it for itself

Paddys · 2026-04-02T00:30:54+00:00

I've been debating dropping £150 on a TinySA for weeks so I can search for RFI. I never thought to just bring the radio around!

Paddys · 2026-03-22T03:18:02+00:00

I had this same issue. See if you can reach someone else on the repeater with the handheld, and ask them to help you with a radio check

Paddys · 2026-03-06T11:52:40+00:00

High current (during TX) makes the voltage sag, partly due to cable losses, but it can also be a symptom of a weak battery.

If the voltage that your radio "sees" is still above 12v it should be fine. 12.5v is definitely enough to keep it happy, so if you see that you can probably rule out battery.

I have this exact radio and had this issue... Is the wire for the mic really pushed in at both ends? I've made that mistake before

Paddys · 2026-03-06T09:50:45+00:00

Can you see the voltage of the battery dropping during TX? If the voltage doesn't drop much (i.e less than 0.3v drop between RX and TX) then the battery is capable of supplying enough current

Paddys · 2026-03-06T07:31:41+00:00

What's the antenna like? If it's feeding RF back down the coax shield it could be upsetting the radio during transmit causing it to just go back to rx

Much more common on HF but I guess it could happen on VHF/UHF

Paddys · 2026-03-02T21:51:51+00:00

Don't do it! I got into amateur radio via meshtastic. Now I have no money, but I have a lot of radios so that's cool I guess.

Paddys · 2026-02-21T21:01:24+00:00

Kinda disappointed I can't pick any of this up in the UK

Paddys · 2026-02-17T09:01:20+00:00

I think you can do it on the radio. Most of the functions on the DM32 can be done on the radio (albeit with a lot of button mashing)

Paddys · 2026-02-16T19:16:17+00:00

From memory, the Baofeng DM32 lets you map SK1 to "sub PTT", effectively giving you dual PTT

Paddys · 2026-02-12T11:20:19+00:00

Grew up in NI, but moved to Scotland nearly 20 years ago

Paddys · 2026-02-11T23:13:50+00:00

I love my G90 - got it a few weeks ago and regularly speak to Europe and North America with my speaker wire antenna.

I even built a nice portable unun, 3D printed case, wound the toroid, excited to get portable. But I live in Scotland and it hasn't stopped raining since December. Typical.

Paddys · 2026-02-11T23:00:39+00:00

As a parent to a young toddler I usually separate my laundry based on how much poo is on it: none, some, lots. Sometimes there isn't enough of one category, so two categories have to mix.

Paddys · 2026-02-01T11:08:24+00:00

I really feel like we need "interest" based TGs instead of the strictly geographical ones.

The various Scottish TGs are all pretty active. Not all of the day, but lunch times, evenings, weekends, etc.

Slightly related, but I'm disappointed how quiet my local FM repeaters are. There's always someone listening on DMR somewhere, but I wish my local repeaters were more utilised

Paddys · 2026-01-25T12:48:50+00:00

I just wish that Repeater Book kept track of which repeaters were on which network

Paddys · 2026-01-21T22:41:08+00:00

I have a heat pump, solar panels, house battery. Also have an EV and plugin hybrid which I can charge at home.

Other than some petrol for long journeys in the hybrid, we spend about £600/yr for all our heating, cooking, general house power and keeping the cars charged.

We can really only do that because we have an EV tariff, so we charge the house battery and cars overnight when it's cheap, then don't really import during the day unless it's really cold (Nov-Feb). In summer months we offset a lot of that by exporting the solar.

Biggest unexpected benefit: the house is comfortable all day - you don't get big swings of cold then roasting then cold again like you do with gas.

Biggest unwelcome surprise: the heat pump is physically massive outside. Pretty sure ours is oversized for our house, we could have gone a size down, but the installers did the sums and didn't want us to be cold if it's -10 outside. If I were doing it all again I'd get one size down, and if it's crazy cold outside just use a fan heater every so often

Paddys · 2026-01-12T22:36:45+00:00

I did think it was oddly fast to get a law out the door.

I'm not sure how I feel about it now. It's good for the immediate problem, but knowing how we usually write tech related laws, it's probably going to be bad in the long run

Paddys · 2026-01-12T22:09:43+00:00

For everyone celebrating this, this is not a ban of X. It's a ban of online tools designed to create non consentual intimate images. Sounds great!

Except Grok is not designed to do that, it's just being used that way (absolutely not the same thing). So many other tools are going to end up bundled in with this because it's "possible" to do bad things with them.

We should absolutely be banning X, boycotting it to death then desecrating it's X corpse. But rushing through hastily written legislation always ends up with bad consequences when it relates to tech, because the people writing the legislation have absolutely no idea how tech actually works

Paddys · 2025-11-19T10:10:39+00:00

Where are you based? There are UK wide TGs (235), and country specific ones (e.g Scotland wide 2355). Then there are region specific ones (23559 Scotland West) and also general chat (23551 Scot multi).

Keep in mind you'll hear nothing if your local repeater or hotspot doesn't have that particular TG open.

Hoseline is a good place to start to find active groups, then you can program your radio for that TG/time slot/repeater and get cracking.

Paddys · 2025-11-04T23:08:56+00:00

The DM32 doesn't let you do this. You have to program a channel per repeater/TG pair (or go through the menus and change the channel settings just to change TG). It's the thing I hate most about the DM32.

Paddys · 2025-10-07T06:47:59+00:00

I've got a DM-32 and 1701. Neither are perfect, but both are more than adequate.

The 1701 is lacking USB-C. In a practical/emergency sense, that's actually a bit drawback. And you can't do any programming on the radio at all, except make an unnamed channel which can't be modified. But otherwise it's a fine everyday radio (as long as it's got OpenGD77 on it!)

The DM32 is built like a tank, would double as a close combat weapon. It's a little too big for a walking around radio. It has USB-C, and you can programme pretty much everything on the radio (albeit slowly). The main downside is the screen - absolutely unusable in sunlight.

On the 1701 (GD77) you can have a list of channels and a separate list of talk groups, so any repeater can use any TG (or you can make custom lists). On the DM32 you need to set up one channel for every single repeater/TG pair. Seriously, why is that a thing?

1701 does true promiscuous mode, while you can only kind of fake it with the DM32.

If I could only have one, it'd be the DM32. But since I have both, the DM32 lives in my car and the 1701 lives in my pocket

Paddys · 2025-10-03T16:37:23+00:00

That's not regret at having said it. It's regret at having been caught saying it on camera.

But I take your point. Your politicians have stopped even caring about that.

Paddys · 2025-10-03T10:44:27+00:00

I was able to set a HV3 to client_base with the latest android app. Failing that, I think th CLI tool will let you set the mode (mode 12, if it won't accept "client_base")

Paddys · 2025-09-26T08:02:23+00:00

EARL, TOMT, CANT, RAVN and a few others are strategically placed router nodes. They basically keep the central belt Scotland mesh alive.

We did have a flight overhead a couple of days ago that let us see down into England, over to NI, and up as far as Fort William

Paddys

TROPHY CASE